KITCHEN ADVENTURES: EHHHH, WHAT’S UP, DOC? Two carrot recipes.

Creamy Carrots and Onion: Chop a couple carrots into coins, and coarsely chop up some yellow onion. Saute the coins, a good heaping dollop of chopped garlic, and whatever dried herbs or spices you’re using, all in olive oil. (I think I used dried basil–because I’m trying to get rid of it–and sage, cayenne, and black pepper.) Cook until the carrots are… you know… cooked.

Quickly throw in your onion and saute until barely cooked. (I like very sharp onion; other people might want to add the onion earlier.) Add some heavy cream, stir, and add your favorite chopped melty cheese. I used Parrano. Cook until you want to eat it, then plant your face in the dish.

the verdict: Look, this is ugly. It’s basically creamy glop with carrots. But you’re aiming straight for the pleasure jugular. I loved this. It was so rich I couldn’t finish it, but it reheated perfectly the next day.

Basically, I wouldn’t serve this at a dinner party; but I’d definitely cook it on some wintry night when I needed cheesy, creamy comfort.

Roasted carrots and… stuff. Like the recipe above, this is a (significantly) modified version of a Food and Wine dish. I don’t know why it really didn’t work; F&W; has been good to me before.

Anyway, I chopped two big carrots in half crosswise, rolled them in olive oil, spiced them (in approximate order of how much: black pepper, cumin, cayenne, curry powder, cinnamon), and roasted them on a foiled baking tray for ten minutes at 375. Then I split the bigger carrot pieces in half lengthwise, added canned garbanzos, chopped garlic, big chunks of yellow onion (like… eighths?), and more olive oil and spices, stirred everything, and roasted for ten more minutes. Then stirred again, and the carrots still didn’t seem quite done, nor did the other stuff seem especially roasted, so I roasted for another ten minutes. Then scooped everything into a dish.

the verdict: Messy (and yes, I could’ve chopped the carrots and onions smaller after roasting–I would have, if I were attempting to serve this to company, but the dish would still have looked sloppy, I think) and oddly metallic in taste.

These are the same carrots I used for the previous dish, but maybe there is something wrong with them, and I couldn’t tell because of all the cream?? Did I manage to over-roast them? They did seem glazy and brown in places, but that’s caramelization, right?, which should make them sweeter and roastier, not metallic. Or maybe the flavor combination doesn’t work (despite all the spiciness, this dish was bland overall), or… something. The near-total failure of this dish is mysterious to me. I will say that the garbanzos were the only really yummy part of the dish, and since my main goal here was to learn whether F&W; is right that canned garbanzos roast well, the magazine was definitely vindicated on that point.

I tried putting parmesan cheese on this after the first several bites. The cheese wasn’t awful (it’s a bland dish! you can’t clash with the flavors in a dish that’s already not super flavorful) but it made the dish messier without notably improving the taste.

Sigh.